spoils of war
by Nygmatech
Summary: Lex Luthor is just like any other parent, really. He only wants the best for his son. Shame he never got a chance to show it. Implied Luthor/Superman


**A/N: A warning, there's quite a bit of Smallville canon in this, especially in the beginning and whenever Clark and Lex are mentioned together, but even if that isn't your cup of tea, this is obviously mostly Young Justice and you should be able to read it without too much confusion.**

spoils of war

There is a sprawling museum under LexCorp Towers where you keep everything that's ever been important to you, hoarding memories like gold and jewels. It's an unfortunate habit you picked up some twenty years ago, a car crash and an unfortunate trip to Smallville, Kansas, that defined the rest of your life.

Here: The silver Porsche you drove off the bridge, the roof torn off like a can of sardines, a Clark Kent-shaped dent in the hood and in your life. The leather driving gloves on a pedestal beside the car, the clothes you were wearing folded neatly. They smell like the Kansas sun and the river, all those years ago when that pretty farmboy pulled you out of the water and breathed life back into you.

You don't ever want to let that go. You didn't even then, so you kept it all, in the way a woman might collect gifts from the man she loves. But it had always been a bit more than that, with Smallville. With Clark. You've been told you have an obsessive personality, that it was unnatural, but collecting Clark was as easy as breathing, back then.

There are pictures blown up all over the walls. Clark, Martha, Jonathan. Kryptonite of all varieties, triple sealed between panes of leaded glass. Every suit and shirt you wore that he accidentally ruined: There, that one, the charred lavender silk, and if you look close enough you can imagine his hands sliding over the fabric as he doubly checked to make sure the fire was out.

There are a handful of happy memories two, threaded in sparsely among the rubble.

There, the soft plum scarf you were wearing the first time he kissed you, in the barn loft looking out onto the fresh winter snow, the wool stretched where he gripped it too hard to pull you forward and up to meet him. He didn't get far, though, and you also have the shotgun Jonathan Kent chased you off with when he walked in.

You've collected every single issue of the Warrior Angel comics, lined up in order. Photographs and samples from the cave walls below Smallville, the legends of Naman and Sageeth meticulously and personally translated from the original Kryptonian.

Here's a secret: You've spent endless hours breaking the initial alphabet, but once you got that, it was all downhill. The grammar is most similar to traditional Japanese, and you've worked out a vocabulary of about two and a half thousand words. You've been fluent in Kryptonian for nearly ten years, but no one needs to know that.

And you've gone so far already, you think nothing of collecting one thing more:

A few intact strands of DNA, carefully extracted and pieced together from a swab you took the last time you stole a kiss from Superman, in the middle of the battlefield.

* * *

Your motives the first time around are clear cut and understandable, the Light desires a superweapon and you will make them one, with one of those fragile, unstable strands of Superman's DNA you've been preserving for just an event.

But Project Match is a failure, and that is that. The Light will have to get their superweapon elsewhere.

So you don't entirely understand what makes you try a second time, what makes you think, as you meticulously begin the new experiment yourself, that this is a good idea. Officially, of course, all you're doing is stabilizing the Kryptonian DNA with a few human genes, and the Light assumes this is only another attempt at Project Match, but well. Your personal motives are less than pure this time.

You ignore work for nearly three months, Mercy practically running the company. LexCorp stock has dropped by a noticeable percentage, but you can take care of that later.

"You have to at least eat, sir," says Charity timidly over your headpiece. You rip it off and throw it to the floor, because _nothing _can interrupt this.

You turn back to the lab table.

* * *

Here are a few things the Light doesn't know about Project Kr, or "the Superboy" as they've been calling him:

Lex Luthor is, in fact, a stalker with a test tube.

A stalker with a test tube who oversaw the entire project himself without any assistance from any other scientists.

A stalker with a test tube who combined his own DNA with Superman's.

A stalker with a test tube who has _no_ intention of letting _his son _become anything other than a beloved and pampered Luthor heir. But no one needs to know that, not yet.

(You've had the plans to overthrow the rest of the Light drawn out and ready to be put into action for months, just in case it comes to that. But for now, you let the records state that he is to become a superweapon; anything else would lessen the element of surprise. You don't realize that leaving those records will ultimately be the thing to separate you from your son.)

* * *

His name is Julian Clark Luthor, after your baby brother and your one great love, the boy's father. The birth certificate is locked in your desk with an overflowing file of all the other necessary and incidental fabricated documents. All the preparations have been made, inquiries into the most prestigious private schools in the state, plans to transfer Hope to duty as Julian's bodyguard, the bedroom next to yours in the penthouse carefully made up to suit a teenage boy. Mercy and Charity have agreed to handle the press releases.

Publically, there will be suspicion of Julian's mother being Lana Lang by how the timeline of your marriages line up, which will explain Julian's dark hair and tan skin.

He looks so much like Clark, you think, and press your fingertips to the glass of the pod. Inside, suspended only a few inches away, is your son.

The procedure didn't work perfectly; to some extent his genes are still unstable, and the advanced aging cut deeper than you would have thought, an aching pain and disappointment at having to watch your son grow up in the space of a few weeks in the confines of a laboratory. What you wouldn't have given, then, to be able to hold him as an infant, but the fact that you couldn't didn't change anything. The feeling of awe was still there when you first laid eyes on the tiny baby, the idea of your son finally becoming _real_.

You loved him, unconditionally, from the moment you watched his first tiny, unstable cell divide, the beginnings of life.

Julian is sixteen now, and he's almost ready to be born out of the pod and meet the outside world.

A few more days, you think, and touch your forehead to the glass.

On the morning of July 4th 2011, you leave Cadmus labs with a spring in your step, thinking of the future.

* * *

The most agonizing pain a parent can go through is losing a child.

You're in a meeting with representatives from Wayne Enterprises later that day when Mercy slips quietly into your office. You know something has happened the moment you see her; despite everything you have done in your life, Mercy has never shown any inclination to be afraid of you. But you can feel it, in her posture. She's acting like you're a rabid dog that will lash out at her at any moment.

"Sir," she says, stiffly. "There has been an accident at the Cadmus facilities."

* * *

And here, just another piece of solid evidence for how these so-called "superheroes" are only masked terrorists operating under a false umbrella of "justice."

What justice is there in stealing a child away for nothing more than being born under circumstances that those costumed freaks couldn't even _begin_ to understand?

Because they've brought this on themselves. They expect a supervillain, a supervillain they'll get.

You'll destroy every last one of them for what they did to your family., no matter what part you have to play to do it.

* * *

Conner Alexander Kent. It has a nice ring to it, you'll give the League that, but your lip still curls at the sound of the name.

However, you think dryly, his middle name, that's interesting. That must have been Clark, or Bruce perhaps. Clever. Julian—Conner, you correct yourself—will never know what it means. Everyone's forgotten what Lex was short for in the first place.

And if your son can't be a Caesar, he will at least be an Alexander, and a Luthor by birth right. His name only shows he was born for a greater purpose than playing dress up with the people that stole him away from _you_.

* * *

You take the elevator down past the ground level of LexCorp, and when the doors open, your private museum is there, waiting for you to walk through it and bring the memories carefully alive again.

The silver Porsche you drove off the bridge—

No. Deeper.

You walk forward.

* * *

This is where Clark ends and Conner begins. You've started collecting him now too, just like his father before him.

In another universe, maybe, you would have been one of those nagging, irritating parents that followed their kid around with a camera, documenting every moment and keeping every photo. You would have been the kind of parent that kept newspaper clippings, favorite toys that had been outgrown, baby shoes that didn't fit anymore, every single terrible crayon drawing and school art project. Would have gone to every single bring-your-parent-to-school day, would have picked your son up after school and made sure a lunch was packed every day.

And that, you think bitterly with the realization, was what you were envisioning those months ago when you started Project Kr.

But this is here, and now, and this is the best you're going to get.

The first thing that has been moved was the pod Conner spent the first sixteen weeks of his life in. Or, rather, what's left of it. You run your hand over the cracked and broken glass, and move on.

There are stacks upon stacks of photos in glossy print; fuzzy shots from security cameras as Superboy _and_ Conner Kent, the standard ones you've hacked from the League database, practically anything yu can get your hands on.

You have a copy of the birth certificate issued by the League, sitting side by side with the one you fabricated yourself. Past that are the school records, report cards and teachers notices and detention slips. The margins of all the papers are filled with neat, cramped notes in your favorite purple ink. Here, displayed together, a before and after of his latest semester transcript. Before, all D's and C's and a single A. After, mostly B's and A's and a single C. It would have stopped him from getting into a decent university, and in any case, Conner is still a bright kid, he only doesn't know how to apply himself.

There's nothing wrong with watching out for your son.

* * *

It's time for a change of pace.

No secrets, you think, and get in the car. It's nearing midnight and you instruct Mercy to drive you to East Potomac Park.

And you're on your way to meet your son for the first time.


End file.
